CN, you couldn't be more correct about the "rear!" Perhaps, pharmacies should try to suggestive sell by having the magazine rack near the pharmacy. "Would you like to buy a few magazines with that? It may help the process!" But for real I don't envy her this weekEND.

I have had to do occult blood fecal testing in the past. They send you out the door with what is obviously a toilet seat with a bowl attached. My dr's office has done this twice with no large bag to disguise it. Nothing says, "I gotta problem with my poop" like a big old toilet seat.

On the "other end" of the spectrum, when I worked at a primary care veterinary clinic, people used to forget to bring the little fecal containers that we sent with them to collect poop. They would send it in all sorts of containers. I can remember more than one person that wanted their tupperware back.It made us all do the icky dance and make a note in the chart not to accept homemade baked goods from the person.

I work in a pharmacy. The suggestion to step over to the [not very] private counseling window is just polite speak for 'I need you to get your ass out of the way so I can help the people standing in line behind you' I'd also wager that those other people in line had no clue/no interest in what it was she was getting. Until she spoke out...then I imagine they would be all ears.

Yeah, the whole privacy thing is a bit of a joke. I feel bad when I haul that big grocery bag over to the counter (with the Go-Lytely in it) and expect the person to ask questions with someone else breathing down their neck. Some people couldn't care less though, and I think it's great!

Oh, so the old bag had some questions about her Golytely. Well I guess she needs the pharmacist to read the directions off the bottle to her. Apparently the detailed instruction sheet that her doctor gave her is not good enough. God, people are so stupid.

On a serious note, what they don't tell you about that stuff is, once you're no longer passing solid matter, you can stop drinking it; at that point it's done its job. No, you don't have to finish the whole four liters, unless you've skipped the "stop eating solid food" step and are consequently so full of you-know-what that it actually takes a whole gallon to empty you out.

i'm late on this one ... but if i saw a person with the golytely bag ... i often recommended cottonelle wipes and the softest toilet paper we had. golytely was misnamed. if dr grumpy had named it it would have been "shitsalot"

Welcome to my whining!

This blog is entirely for entertainment purposes. All posts about patients may be fictional, or be my experience, or were submitted by a reader, or any combination of the above. Factual statements may or may not be accurate.

Singing Foo!

Have Dr. Grumpy delivered automatically to your Kindle for only 99 cents a month! Sign up here!

Dr. Grumpy is for hire! Need an article written (humorous, medical, or otherwise) or want to commission a genuine Grumpy piece for your newspaper/magazine/toilet paper roll? Contact me to discuss subjects. You can reach me at the email address below, or through my Linked-In profile.

Note: I do not answer medical questions. If you are having a medical issue, see your own doctor. For all you know I'm really a Mongolian yak herder and have no medical training at all except in issues regarding the care and feeding of Mongolian yaks.